LONDON — Michael Wolf, who was ousted as Swedbank’s chief executive this week, has been referred to financial prosecutors in Sweden for suspicion of violating market abuse laws, the bank confirmed on Friday.

Swedbank, based in Stockholm, announced on Tuesday that Mr. Wolf was leaving immediately at the request of the board.

Mr. Wolf, who was chief executive for seven years, had faced criticism in the Swedish media over his handling of a scandal involving real estate deals and potential conflicts of interest by two senior managers, one of whom has since left the bank. The Financial Supervisory Authority of Sweden initiated an investigation into the potential conflicts of interest last year.

On Tuesday, Anders Sundstrom, the Swedbank chairman, said that the board sought Mr. Wolf’s departure primarily because of a need for a change in leadership of the bank, but acknowledged that the investigation played a role.

On Friday, Swedbank said that it had submitted a report to the F.S.A. and that report had been referred to the Economic Crime Authority, which will decide whether to pursue a criminal inquiry in the matter.

“The reason for this is that the bank has identified transactions which ‘may be assumed’ to constitute a criminal offense,” the bank said in a news release on Friday. “The person who has carried out the transactions is the bank’s former C.E.O., Michael Wolf.”

Mr. Wolf denied wrongdoing on Friday in a statement to the Swedish news agency TT.

On a conference call on Friday, Mr. Sundstrom said the bank was prohibited under Swedish law from providing details on Tuesday about its report to the regulator.

“Everything I said on Tuesday was correct,” Mr. Sundstrom said. “The board had started a process to find a new C.E.O. and the main reason for that was that we wanted to speed up the change, to move faster in our digital dialogue with our clients and get a better understanding among our employees. On top of that, we saw we had a problem in getting management working together.”

Mr. Sundstrom said that the bank notified the F.S.A. last Friday, which was the reason it acted quickly to seek Mr. Wolf’s departure. He declined to say what type of financial instrument the potential market abuse revolved around.

“My concern it would have hurt the shareholders in Swedbank in a serious way if the information we had given today had been out before we had taken Michael Wolf out of his job,” he said. “My feeling is that it was extremely necessary for the shareholder to do that.”

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the status of two senior managers at Swedbank who had been involved in a potential conflict of interest investigation last year. Only one has since left the bank, not both.

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